Distributed applications, by nature of being distributed, may divide up tasks, problems, or operations among different distributed components of a distributed system. Such distribution offers several advantages. Complex or computing resource intensive tasks may be divided up among multiple low-end computing systems, instead of relying upon a more expensive, monolithic system. The number of computing systems that make up a distributed system for a distributed application may be more easily scaled up or down to reflect changing needs for distributed applications. Distributed systems may also be beneficial when the nature of the tasks performed by an operation, such as where data is generated in one location, and process, stored, or analyzed in another, are physically distributed.
The advantages afforded by distributed applications have led to increasingly large sets of data. These large data sets may be more easily maintained in distributed fashion. Different portions of data may be maintained independently in different locations. However, consistency problems may be introduced when transactions or other operations that update or modify the different portions of data may need to be performed consistently. For instance, if two different transactions modify a portion of data in one location (along with portions of data in other locations), some kind of consistency mechanism may have to be implemented in order to ensure that only one of the transactions modifies the portion of data an completes successfully.
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that the embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include”, “including”, and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.